The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulatory body overseeing technical education in the country, has issued new guidelines to ensure that graduates go beyond just earning a degree and are taught practical and employable skills by technical colleges. The new guidelines include designing industry-friendly courses, and finding internship opportunities for students in suitable industries.
Here’s how AICTE plans to make technical courses more industry-friendly:
1. Technical colleges across India will have an industry consultation committee.
2. The committee will revamp the curriculum of technical courses by December, which will be implemented from the next academic session.
3. Students would be taught about crisis management and interpersonal-communication skills among others.
4. The exam system would be made more concepts oriented.
In terms of internships, AICTE wants every technical college to ensure that their students should be joining at least three to four internships and each internship should last four to eight weeks. Also, the college is solely responsible for finding internship for its students. This is big change from the current system, where students undertake just one internship during summer. In fact, in many cases students don’t even get internship opportunities.
Further, all technical colleges have to get at least 50 per cent of their courses accredited. For this, the colleges will get five years’ time. However, if they fail to get their courses accredited, they will not get AICTE-approval.